Dedicoat helps celebrate York HR’s 50th

BBC Radio 2 presenter Alan Dedicoat is helping to celebrate York Hospital Radio’s 50th birthday by hosting a special fundraising dinner.

The station turns 50 this weekend and is looking back at the first ever programme – a request show to the former Fulford Maternity and Naburn hospitals – which was broadcast in 1964.

The first show lasted 45 minutes and took 12 hours to record. The very first request was ‘Thank heaven for little girls’ by Maurice Chevalier.

York Hospital Radio chairman Ian Clennan comments: “It’s an amazing achievement for a voluntary organisation and registered charity to be still doing today fundamentally what they were doing 50 years ago – entertaining hospital patients in York, and providing a therapeutic service for them. I am very proud to be chairman at the time of this special anniversary.”

Other events to mark the anniversary this weekend include a special live broadcast from the Yorkshire Museum on Saturday and a live programme on Sunday which will feature members past and present as they present their personal memories of their time at York Hospital Radio. This will be preceded at 11am by the station’s longest serving member, Keith Lea, presenting a special vinyl-only show of the music of the last 50 years.